Parmenides' Way Of Truth

Parmenides was born in Elea, probably in the second half of the 6th century BCE. He is regarded as the founder of Eleatic School of Philosophy. Eleatic’s preferred to make use of their reason to respond to the intriguing questions of their time rather than merely relying on the sense experience like the Milesians. Parmenides is the first to employ deductive, a priori arguments to justify his claims, he competes with Aristotle for the title “Father of Logic.”

Parmenides’ only work is a hexameter poem entitled “On Nature” of which only fragments have survived. It consists of three sections i.e. Prologue, Way of Truth or Reality (Alétheia) and Way of Seeming or opinions (or Doxa in Greek). The Proem (prologue) features a young man on a cosmic (perhaps spiritual) journey in search of enlightenment. The second section i.e. truth or  Alétheia is the main philosophy of Parmenides which denies change, motion, and differentiation. Way of seeming or Doxa  concludes the poem with a theogonical and cosmogonical account of the world, which paradoxically employs the very phenomena (motion, change, and so forth) that Reality seems to have denied. But he says  Doxa is supposed to be representative of the mistaken “opinions of mortals,” and thus is to be rejected on some level.

Way of Truth or reality:

Parmenides’ main idea is that All things are One i.e. Being, therefore, he is a true monist. He is also a true rationalist because he trusts mind or logos over sense experience for example: he says Heraclitus’ idea of change i.e. coming to be and perishing and motion are illusion, which is contrary to our daily experiences. What is being? Why did he see being as the unifying principle of everything else? What made him think that change is an illusion? Why does he think that being cannot be differentiated into different objects with characteristics?

Pramenides’ argument is based on two premises:

   1) You have to make a choice between what exists i.e. Being (is) or not-being (is not).

   2) You think (either being or not-being)

Parmenides says  in fragment. 8.5-21, that What Is must be “ungenerated and deathless”: but not ever was it, nor yet will it be, since it is now together entire,/ single, continuous; for what birth will you seek of it?/ How, whence increased? From not being I shall not allow/ you to say or to think: for not to be said and not to be thought/ is it that it is not. And indeed what need could have aroused it/ later rather than before, beginning from nothing, to grow?/ Thus it must either be altogether or not at all./ Nor ever from not being will the force of conviction allow/ something to come to be beyond it: on account of this neither to be born/ nor to die has Justice allowed it, having loosed its bonds,/ but she holds it fast. And the decision about these matter lies in this:/ it is or it is not; but it has in fact been decided, just as is necessary,/ to leave the one unthought and nameless (for no true/ way is it), and <it has been decided> that the one that it is indeed is genuine./ And how could What Is be hereafter? And how might it have been?/ For if it was, it is not, nor if ever it is going to be:/ thus generation is extinguished and destruction unheard of.

To understand his philosophy, we need to ponder over these questions for a while:            

1) Nothing exists

2) Nothing does not exist

3) Where do we come from?

Parmenides’ chief interest is What really exists?

The answer he comes up with is esti i.e. being. All the different things we see around us male-female, trees, birds, animals, mountains and rivers etc they don’t really exist but just seem or appear to exist. The only that exists is being or esti.

What does he mean by being?

Parmenides’ concept of being is univocal. It does not refer to any concrete perceptible reality but only to being as such, to the being which everything possesses since all of them exist. This is the being which encompasses everything –the whole reality.

Where do we come from?

If we think like this: Before being born we were not-being, we become being or exist when we are born and return to not-being when we die.

Then Parmenides points out that there’s a problem of making an assumption that “nothing” or not-being exists. If there was a not-being then not-being would be being which is absurd. Thus, we cannot come from not-being or nothing because something cannot come from nothing or not-being. You can either go from something to another thing or if both (being and not-being) exists, you cannot go from existence to non-existence as there’s no such thing as non-existence or not-being, whatever is, is(being).

Therefore, he describes being as unbegotten and incorruptible; it cannot come from non-being, because non-being is nothing, and from nothing, nothing comes; it cannot come from being because being exists, and what already exists need not be brought into existence. This means that the being has no beginning and no end; it is immutable, perfect, homogeneous and complete, with no need for anything. This follows that time, space and motion are not possible, they are just opinions of mortals. 

What made him think that change is an illusion?

Parmenides rejects the Heraclitus’ idea of change because change (i.e. ceasing to be in one state and coming to be in another state) involves the existence of not being. Not-being is not a thinkable thought and if not-being is not a thinkable thought then coming to be and perishing i.e. change is not a thinkable thought either. As for things to change, we have to make this weird confusion of being and non-being first. You have to cease to exist from your current state i.e. become not-being and then come into existence in order to come to be in another state.

Why does he think that being cannot be differentiated into different objects with characteristics?

There is no plurality of things (ie mountains, rivers, animals, birds and plants etc)  because there is no change. For multiple things to exist, don't they have to be separate from one another?  If you say an empty space separates things from one another then what is this empty space? or there is an absence of things present between me and all the things that aren't me. Then what is this absence of things(empty space) that is present? Isn't this just another fancy way of saying not-being is(exists)? 

Thus, we can conclude that there is no plurality of things there is just one thing i.e. being. Therefore, there is only one sensible thing we can say about the Universe : It is (that's it). What it's like ? Just, just is and it's uniform, not more in one place and less in another. It's a uniform well rounded sphere of being just like sitting there humming with the music of the spheres i.e. B flat note. This is the truth according to Parmenides.

Parmenides’ says whenever we think of something either imaginary or real we think of being. You can’t think of nothing/not-being i.e. thought having no content, even when you can’t think of anything you imagine a black space. So, if you are thinking, the only thing you could think of is being.

To investigate the difficulties when we think of not-being exists we can look at the passage from “Rosencratz and Guilderstone are dead” by Tom Stoppard:

“Rosencrantz: We might as well be dead. Do you think death could possibly be a boat?
Guildenstern: No, no, no... Death is...not. Death isn't. You take my meaning. Death is the ultimate negative. Not-being. You can't not-be on a boat.
Rosencrantz: I've frequently not been on boats.
Guildenstern: No, no, no--what you've been is not on boats.”

Parmenides’ claims that being is apprehended by the intellect alone. The senses grasp the multiplicity of the sensible; but the intelligence sees beyond appearances, and knows what lies behind them, only one reality: being. “Thought and that by which thought is made possible are the same thing; for thought is expressed in being, and hence, without being, there would be no thought. In other words, being and thought are correlative terms since being only reveals itself to thought and it is this revelation that constitutes the truth. i.e. same things exists for thinking and for being.